She nods. “He said I was trying to hurt him, to ruin him. He said it had to stop. I only grabbed the letter opener after he pushed me against the window.” She winces, closes her eyes. “He came at me and it just…it just—”
“If you want to explain this to me someday, fine, but not now,” I say. “We shouldn’t spend all day here. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. We should assume we’ll all be interviewed by the police. Personally, I’m going to refuse to answer questions for a while. I have my own reasons. Luke, we talked about this briefly last night—”
“I’ll do the same,” he says. “Because I’m charged with another crime involving many of the same people, I take the Fifth.”
I nod. “That makes sense. Trinity, I would think you’d want to talk.”
She shrugs. “If I didn’t, it would look weird, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, it would. How did you get into the condo? That rear entrance?”
“Yes,” she says. “So there’s no record of my being there.”
I sigh. “Yeah, but you should admit you were there,” I say. “Your phone will put you there. And you should admit he got a little rough with you. Don’t overplay it, but anything that physically happened, you should probably say, because who knows what their forensicteam might find.” I lean into her. “But the bottom line is, you left, he was alive and well, and he even texted you that apology later last night.”
She manages a quick smile. “I did not knowwhatwas happening when that text arrived.”
“What should we do about this other stuff we’ve had going on?” asks Luke. “The video of you planting the drugs?”
“Oh.” I let out an awkward laugh. “That. I think, ultimately, it doesn’t prove that I actually put drugs in the car. But let me worry about that—”
“Wait,” says Trinity. “The only person who has that video is me. I saved it on my work security app. I’ll just delete it.”
“I don’t think you should start deleting stuff off your phone,” I say. “They can recover things. And then you start getting into the territory of obstruction of justice and evidence tampering.”
“First of all,” she says, “I can’t imagine why they’d look at that app at all. And second of all, I don’t think they’d be able to tell what I’ve deleted. Not on a third-party app.”
I think about that. “Fair points. But…what about Luke’s case? He needs a defense in the drug case. Losing the video takes away his defense.”
We go quiet.
“There’s got to be something we can say,” says Luke, “without that video.”
An idea comes to me. “Actually,” I say, “there is.”
Ten minutes later, we have a story. I can’t find any holes.
“I’m freezing,” I say. “We’ve talked long enough. If we need to talk further, let’s do phone calls. It wouldn’t be suspicious for us to be talking, and they won’t know what we’re saying. Text messages leave words they can read later.”
“Allison, I…” Trinity’s eyes start to fill again. “I don’t know what tosay. You and I are not friends, and what you did last night, the risks you took…”
I clear my throat and take a deep breath. “I did it for two reasons,” I say. “One, I think I’m the one who got Finley so riled up last night. I primed him pretty hard, and he took it out on you.”
Luke looks at me. “And the other reason?”
I lower my head, then raise it again. “Because I owebothof you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I swallow hard. “Finley didn’t cut the brakes on your bike that day, Luke. I did.”
69
Allison
The day of Luke’s accident. A Tuesday in May, the year 1998.
Ally, my mother called up to me, though I was already coming down the stairs before school.Are you wearing the beret?
